Restored Renaissance Masterpiece on View in New Installation at Metropolitan Museum
A recent restoration of a "Madonna and Child" by Filippino Lippi (1457-1504), the great 15th Century Florentine painter has revealed a vivid, richly colored masterpiece.
A test cleaning revealed that beneath a thick, discolored varnish there was a beautifully preserved, richly colored painting. It emerged that the varnish had been artificially toned to create an almost monochromatic appearance—an amber-colored uniformity that conformed to the idea of how an Old Master should appear. So striking is the transformation that the picture seems a new acquisition.
To celebrate this restoration, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is mounting A Renaissance Masterpiece Revealed: Filippino Lippi’s Madonna and Child, a focused exhibition, beginning January 15, 2011, that will include the picture and a number of objects in the Museum’s permanent collection that can be associated with (Lippi patron Filippo) Strozzi...
Read the entire story at artdaily.org